


Rudy the Red

by urdnot_wrekt



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22274803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urdnot_wrekt/pseuds/urdnot_wrekt
Summary: Spreading a little Mass Effect Holiday Cheer!Elle Shepard may not be an expert on Christmas...but she could teach a master class on dad humor!
Relationships: Thane Krios/Female Shepard
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Rudy the Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astraielle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astraielle/gifts).



“Hey, Skipper, what’s in this box over here?”

Elle, perched precariously on the edge of the countertop as she attempted to hang a string of Christmas lights around the entrance to the kitchen, paused for a moment.

“Uh…which box over where?” she called back.

She waited a few seconds, but heard no response. Figuring Ashley had probably just opened the box and answered her own question, Shepard shrugged and went back to decorating. So far, she had managed to adorn the walls and ceiling of the apartment’s entryway with the elegant shimmer of classic white lights, and her goal was to keep going until she ran out of lights to decorate with. Considering how many boxes Tali and Ash had brought over for her to use, she was pretty sure she could have the whole downstairs looking like a glowing winter wonderland in no time.

Elle reached up once again to drape the cord around a hook she had placed earlier in the day, and finding that she couldn’t quite get the right angle, she leaned out a bit over the edge of the counter, twisting her torso so she could still get a proper look at where the lights needed to hang. She could feel herself beginning to lose her balance even before her feet started to slide across the smooth countertop, and she flung her arms up reflexively to steady herself but found nothing in front of her to grab onto. Just as her right foot hit the edge of the counter and went down, she felt a pair of sure, strong hands grab her around the waist and firmly place her back onto her feet.

“You should be more careful, Siha. If you break a limb, that would leave Grunt to hang the rest of the lights. And he doesn’t have your eye for aesthetics.”

Shepard turned around to find Thane smiling at her, his hands still hovering at her hips.

“I guess a broken bone wouldn’t do much for the Christmas spirit, huh?” she grinned.

“No, I can’t imagine it would.”

He chuckled, then watched carefully, keeping a hand on her lower back for support, as Elle finished framing the kitchen doorway with lights and hopped down from the counter. She took a step back to admire her handiwork, nodding approvingly.

“How’s it look?” she asked, turning to look at Thane.

He smiled at her, and left a light kiss against the side of her cheek, before finally pulling his eyes away to take in the brightly lit hallway. The comforting glow of dozens of soft white bulbs, mixed in with the glint of dangling silver icicles and crisp paper snowflakes. Across from the kitchen, their enormous tree (possibly a bit overambitious, thanks to Grunt), was lit from top to bottom with colorful, winking lights, and filled with ornaments the whole Normandy family had collected or made over the last few days. It was beginning to look a lot…

“Like Christmas,” he answered.

Elle reached over to slip her hand into his, taking in the sight of him in his bright blue Christmas sweater, worn just to play along with a human holiday he’d have had no interest in if not for her, and felt her heart begin to fill. She kissed him, and it raced. He brushed his fingertips lightly against her cheeks, letting her chin rest in his hands. And then,

“Shepard!” Tali’s voice called from somewhere upstairs. “I don’t know what this…oh, that might…okay, I don’t know if these are decorations or…toys?”

She locked eyes with Thane and, smiling, shook her head.

“I’ll be right up,” she called.

With a gentle tug, Elle pulled Thane along with her and headed for the stairs, making her way in the general direction of where she thought Tali’s voice had come from. The further up they went, the more distinctly they could hear sounds of boxes being emptied and decorations being sorted through. A slight jingle of bells or some other kind of bits and baubles floated down the hallway from the guest bedroom, and as Elle and Thane turned the corner to enter the room, they both froze in shock at the sheer number of ornaments and other holiday trinkets strewn haphazardly across the floor.

“I can’t believe Anderson’s collection of Christmas decorations is actually bigger than _my mom’s_ ,” Ash announced when she saw the two of them walk in. She held up a tiny ceramic snowman wearing a hat and vest and smoking an even tinier pipe. “He has _eight_ of these. Not eight different snowmen, or even eight different poses of this snowman; he has eight of _this exact_ snowman. Which…honestly turned out to be a good thing, since Grunt has already broken one.”

Shepard looked up to where Grunt sat atop the bed, a tiny Santa hat perched (or…was that tape?) on top of his head, and wearing a knitted red and white scarf around his neck.

“We told him he should unpack things on the bed from now on because it’s soft, and he’s less likely to break anything up there,” Ash clarified.

“I’m a krogan,” Grunt said. “I can break things anywhere.”

“Well, try not to, please.”

Elle smiled at him and then turned her attention back to the floor.

Next to Ash, Tali reached into a box and pulled out a small wooden sleigh, complete with a burlap-sack-toting Santa and a full team of reindeer.

“Is this for a child to play with?” she asked. “And also, what is this fake plant doing in here?”

Shepard stepped further into the room to get a closer look at what Tali had in her hand, and upon seeing it, started laughing.

“Okay, so, to your first question, technically a kid could play with that if they want, but it’s really supposed to just sit on a shelf somewhere and give off Christmas vibes. And for your second question, that’s called mistletoe. People hang it around their houses at Christmastime and if you and another person stand under it together, you’re supposed to kiss.”

“No matter who it is?”

“In theory, I guess…yeah.”

Tali looked mildly horrified as she tossed the mistletoe back into the box.

“I’m going to leave that one in there,” she announced.

“I thought you might,” Elle laughed.

She leaned overtop the box and peeked inside to see what else was still waiting to be unpacked. A few more snowmen, a set of Mr. and Mrs. Clause figurines, some nice glass ornaments that she made a mental note to put on the tree later, and…a harness of sleigh bells? It certainly wouldn’t be the oddest thing in the room, she decided, and besides, she thought it might be a lot of fun to see how long she could jangle them before someone threatened her with bodily harm. She was betting Tali would be the first to threaten, but Ash might be the first to beg.

Elle reached into the box and pulled the harness out, and along with it, a pair of felt antlers that had gotten caught underneath one of the bells. Gently, she pried the antlers apart from the harness and placed them on her head.

“I look good, right?” she asked Tali with a grin, shaking the sleigh bells for good measure.

“You certainly look festive,” Tali responded, glancing meaningfully across the room at Ash.

Seeing this, Shepard couldn’t help chuckling again, and dove back into the box for more. This time, she came away with a bright red rubber ball, a little bigger than a golf ball, with a small hole on one side. It only took a few seconds for her to realize what it was for, and when she did, she reached up to stick it on the tip of her nose.

“Should I even bother to ask?” Thane said from beside her, his face bearing an obvious look of amusement.

In that instant, something clicked in Elle’s brain, and she grinned even wider.

“No, you should not,” she replied simply, as she reached up to place the red nose on Thane’s face instead of her own. Before he could protest, she took the antlers off of her head and carefully arranged them on top of his. “And now, the pièce de résistance.” She unfastened the bell harness and carefully draped it across his shoulders.

Standing back to admire her creation, Elle began to laugh, slowly at first, then dissolving into near hysterics, with tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and her cheeks and neck turning red.

“It’s funny, Shepard, but I don’t know if it’s _that_ funny,” Ash said from her spot on the floor.

Even as she said it, she was beginning to laugh herself, and rose to her feet to stand next to Elle. Tali did the same, also starting to chuckle quietly, but nowhere near the level of amusement Shepard herself was experiencing. Thane, to his credit, was taking the whole ordeal in stride.

“I suppose I must look as ridiculous as I feel,” he said to no one in particular.

“You do,” Grunt agreed.

“No,” Elle managed to force out between wheezes, wiping a falling tear from her cheek. “Don’t you guys _get_ it?”

“Get what?” Tali asked.

“ _Who he is_!”

Ash, being the only one in the room with any Christmas experience besides Elle, thought she knew the answer, but still couldn’t figure out why Shepard was finding it so unbelievably funny.

“Well, sure,” she said. “I mean…he’s Rudolph.”

“Rudolph…” Elle prompted.

“The…red-nosed reindeer?”

“ _No_!” Elle laughed again. She paused to take in a deep breath, looked Ash dead in the eye and said, “He’s Rudolph the red-nosed _THANE_ -deer!”

Once again, she doubled over laughing, another tear rolling down her cheek as she leaned on the edge of the bed to keep herself on her feet.

“Oh my god,” Ash groaned, rolling her eyes.

Tali put her head in her hands and sighed.

“ _Keelah_.”

And yet, from the center of the room, a new laughter was heard.

“Heh, heh, heh…”

Shepard turned around mid-chortle and crawled up next to Grunt on the bed.

“Right?” she wheezed.

“Heh…Thane-deer…yes. I like it!”

From across the room, Ash shook her head, then she and Tali sat back down and resumed their task of sorting through Anderson’s trove of Christmas treasures.

“You two are ridiculous,” she said, biting back a smile.

Elle finally caught her breath, her laughter dying down into only a loose chuckle here and there. After a moment, she looked across the room to Thane and found him watching her affectionately, a smile on his face despite the mild perplexity in his eyes.

“Merry Christmas, Siha,” he said quietly, shrugging his shoulders to give the bells a slight jingle.

Shepard grinned.

“Merry Christmas… _deer_.”

“Heh, heh, heh…”


End file.
